


The Resistance Meets the Resistance

by BenW



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:21:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23939092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BenW/pseuds/BenW
Summary: A fic I tossed together pretty much out of nowhere, just some idle ideas of what it would be like if the cast of Star Wars: Resistance were to go to the main Resistance base pre-TROS. Mostly just character interactions that I found compelling or amusing.
Relationships: Tamara Ryvora/Synara San
Kudos: 4





	The Resistance Meets the Resistance

“Y’know, it’s a lot quieter than I thought it’d be.”

“That’s not the word that I’d use for it, but I guess you’re not wrong.”

The forest planet was indeed quiet, but it was not a peaceful quiet, it was more a quiet of concern and anxiety. For Tamara Ryvora, it was even more tense than most planets they had hopped to in their time on the run. The First Order was everywhere, every planet they had tried to go was covered in spying eyes and ears for them even if there weren’t white and black armored soldiers anywhere in sight. But this was even worse than that. This planet was supposed to be the Resistance’s main base, so obscured and hidden away that there were no landing pads or even other settlements anywhere on the planet’s surface. It was an untamed forest in every direction from the moment they entered the atmosphere. If they saw anyone else, it was either the Resistance welcoming them in, or the First Order had found them after all. And despite Kaz’s optimism, Tam thought that the latter was more likely than the former.

She still wasn’t used to being back among her friends. After spending time with the First Order, she expected to turn around and see people in armor and helmets lined up behind her, not the motley group of former pirates and racing pilots that there actually was. Most of these people still thought she was a traitor, or at least she assumed that they did. That’s what she would have thought if she were in their shoes. She still wasn’t sure that what she’d done was the right call, but it was the call she had made and there was no turning back from it now. She’d left the First Order and gone back to the _Colossus,_ back to Kaz and Neeku and Yeager and the rest, her conscience a bit heavier, her head a bit clearer. Now, she found herself in the vanguard of a team that was trying to link up with the Resistance leadership, or whatever was left of it.

There were familiar faces behind her. Synara chief among them, the ex-pirate’s speckled pink skin stood out from the forest’s greenery like a neon bulb. She might not have come except that Kaz had insisted; Tam suspected that he had a crush on her but Synara didn’t seem interested at all in him so it was hard to say. Two of the Aces, Torra Doza and Hype Phazon, were there as well. They were pilots, not exactly suited to this sort of operation, but then again none of them were really suited for it. Walking along in a forest, following a signal sent out in binary code, holding whatever weapons they could manage to scrounge up to protect themselves from the wildlife and other potential dangers, this was new for all of them.

“The signal’s getting stronger.” Kaz reported. He held up the tracking fob, not unlike ones that bounty hunters used, and showed the red light at the front of it. It was flashing faster now, and brighter as well. “We’re getting close.”

“I hope so.” Hype said, a bit louder than he needed to, “Because I’m getting kinda tired of walking. Remind me why we couldn’t just fly in?”

“If we flew in, they’d probably shoot us down.” Tam repeated. They’d been over this, it had been a part of the planning, a part of the briefing before they had even left the _Colossus_ , and again when they had left their shuttle behind and started their trek. Still, it was always Hype bringing it back up, because of course it was. “C’mon Hype, you know that, we went over it enough that I _know_ that you know that.”

“I know, I just, it sucks we have to walk all this way just followin’ a blinking light, y’know?” Hype said with a shrug, “Like, they know we’re not with the First Order, right? Why’re they makin’ us fly through hoops like this?”

“Wouldn’t you if the last three bases you had were ratted out to the First Order?” Synara snapped at him. She didn’t have the patience for Hype, she didn’t know him well enough to not take it seriously. “The Resistance is taking precautions that we could learn from.”

“Easy, you two.” Torra was there before Tam could be, stepping between the two to break up their lines of sight. “Keep your voices down.”

“How much further, Kaz?” Tam asked, even though she knew that Kaz had no more idea than she did. They would only know once they arrived, all they knew was that they were closer now than they had been when they started.

“Not too much further, I think.” Kaz said with his typical optimism. He gave Tam a confident little smile. “I have a good feeling about this.”

“I hope you’re right.” Tam thought of the others back on the _Colossus_ , outside of the planet’s orbit, waiting to hear back from them and probably sitting on pins and needles for every commlink chirp. “Just keep your eye on that light, yeah? I’ll keep an eye on the trees.”

Kaz nodded and turned his attention back to the tracker, concentrating on the light and walking in the direction where he saw the signal get stronger. Tam walked beside him, kicking through the undergrowth and pushing plants aside to make sure he didn’t trip and the others didn’t lose sight of them. She was grateful to Yeager for not having gotten rid of her spare clothes back aboard the _Colossus_ , her big welding boots and gloves were perfect for this sort of job. She was carrying a blaster, too, they all were except Kaz. Kaz didn’t like to carry blasters, and she never really questioned it, because he was a terrible shot anyway.

She turned over her shoulder to look at the others. “C’mon, stay close. If we get separated out here, we can’t spend time looking for each other, we have to keep moving.”

“Alright, First Order, alright, we’re coming.” Hype said it in his joking tone, but it still stung, it stung Tam deep in the soft part of her heart, the part that still considered these people her friends. Hype hated the First Order, it was pretty much the only thing in his life that he hated more than losing a race, and for that to be his new nickname for her meant that he didn’t see her as Tam Ryvora, the racer and mechanic and friend anymore. He saw her as Tam Ryvora, traitor.

Tam turned back to the forest and kept her focus on that, on finding a path through the tangled green vegetation toward wherever they were going. The blaster he had felt heavy hanging from her hip. She’d gotten so used to wearing one while she’d been with the First Order, but that was different, she was a different person then, she’d worn different clothes, she’d talked differently, she’d acted differently. Now, as much as she tried to forget all of that, to go back to the way things had been, she couldn’t. That time had changed her, and everything else had changed around her. She still had to figure out who she was now, and having people like Hype not believe in her anymore didn’t help. Sometimes it seemed like the only one who did believe in her, the one who’d never _stopped_ believing in her, was Kaz. But he believed in everyone. That was what made him Kaz.

“Hey, I think we’re onto something.” Kaz said. He stopped for a moment, and Tam stopped next to him. He held up the tracking fob and rotated it through the air for a moment. Most of the way, it was blinking with a steady intensity, but when he pointed it a particular direction, a bit off to their lefts, the blinking sped up, the light got a bit brighter. “That’s gotta be it.” Kaz spoke excitedly, but hushed, “We’re almost on top of it.”

“Right.” Tam looked up and around to the forest, to the trees and plants and everything around them. It was a very forest-y forest, there was not much to see but greenery, but she still had to look, she had to try and see through it to find something, anything that meant they were close to the Resistance base. She saw nothing more than what she had been seeing the whole time they had been traveling, but she had to try, she had to try to do something on this trip. Kaz trusted her enough to put her right at the front with him, she had to do something to justify that trust. She had to try and keep him safe, or be the lookout, or _something_ useful.

“It should be just-” Kaz started walking again in the direction he was pointing the fob, but before he could get more than two steps ahead when something crashed through the foliage in front of him, causing him to yelp in surprise and jump back.

Before them was a man dressed in green camouflage, it looked like he had a jacket or a poncho on that had leaves and plants stuck to it, and his face was smeared with mud so she couldn’t really make out what he looked like underneath, except that he looked like he was not in the mood to talk, and he was holding a blaster as well, a blaster he had pointed right at Kaz.

“Freeze!” He shouted, “Don’t move!”

Tam drew her blaster as fast as she could with her heavy gloves and jumped forward in front of Kaz. “Easy there!” She shouted back, which drew the man’s blaster from Kaz toward her. “Easy, we’re not here to fight.”

“Who are you?” The man demanded, “What are you doing here?”

“She’s right, we’re not here to fight, we’re with the Resistance.” Kaz said, having gotten over being startled. “We’re following the signal toward the base, see?” He held up the tracking fob for the man to see.

“That doesn’t mean anything, you could have gotten that tracking fob from anywhere.” The man barked, “Who are you really?”

Tam saw movement out of the corner of her eye and glanced that way, and saw two more people dressed in the same sort of camouflage step out of the trees, blaster rifles pointed. She didn’t see Synara, Torra or Hype, but she hoped they were close enough to know this wasn’t a fighting sort of situation. She doubted that Torra or Hype would pull blasters and come to their rescue, but Synara might, and that would make things much worse.

“Look, I told you, we’re not here to fight.” Tam raised her hands in the air, then knelt down, set her blaster on the ground in front of her and stood up, leaving the blaster behind. “See? Kaz is telling the truth, we’re looking for the Resistance, and this is where we were told to come.”

“Told by who? Who gave you these coordinates?”

“Our contact was Commander Poe Dameron,” Kaz said, “He used to fly with me, I’m Kazuda Xiono, and this is Tam Ryvora. Tell him our names, he’ll know us.”

“Fat chance.” The man gestured with his blaster’s muzzle. “Drop that fob, get your hands behind your head.”

“Do as he says, Kaz.” Tam said. She knew that in times like this, Kaz had a habit of protesting a bit too strongly, like he thought that just because he was telling the truth that everyone ought to believe him. It was what made him a lousy spy. She put her own hands behind her head to demonstrate and get him to follow suit.

“Yeah, I get it.” Kaz set the tracking fob down on the ground and put his hands up the same way she had. “We are telling the truth. I’m telling you, contact Poe Dameron, he’ll know who we are on sight.”

One of the others, a woman off to Tam’s left, raised a commlink and started speaking into it, too fast and too quiet for Tam to overhear her. She looked at Kaz, and Kaz looked back, both frustrated and helpless. Tam had guessed that this was how things might go, but Kaz clearly hadn’t. He was always a bit too trusting, too willing to believe that people would do the right things. But then again if he were more suspicious or paranoid, then he never would have gone to the lengths he did to help Tam escape from the First Order, so she couldn’t really be mad at him. She owed him a lot more than she could say; even the fact that he had been a spy for the Resistance all along didn’t burn as much as it used to.

“What about the other three?” The man in front of them raised his voice like he was asking someone else, and a voice behind Tam answered him, another soldier that she couldn’t see without turning all the way around.

“We’ve got them, they disarmed without a fight.”

“Command wants to speak to them.” The woman with the commlink spoke up. “Right away.”

The man who had stopped them nodded. “Right.” He stepped to one side and motioned with his blaster. “Start walking. And keep those hands high.”

Tam started walking, and Kaz walked beside her, both of them keeping their hands up on their heads. Behind her, someone picked her blaster and Kaz’s tracking fob off the ground. She could hear other footsteps following them, but she didn’t know if some of them were the rest of their group, or if they had been truly separated and were being sent to different places. She didn’t dare turn around to look.

“Synara, you there?” She asked out loud.

“I’m here.” The Mirialan’s voice wasn’t as close behind her as Tam would have liked, but at least she could hear her, she breathed a sigh of relief at that. “We’re all here.”

“Stop talking!” One of the soldiers barked. She didn’t poke at Tam with her blaster at least, if it were a First Order soldier shouting at her there would already be a blaster shoved into her face.

Somehow, despite the situation, being led away through a nameless forest at blasterpoint, unarmed and unable to contact their ship, Tam was calm. She’d been through worse, she realized. She had been the only one aboard an entire Star Destroyer, alone in enemy territory, for weeks. She’d fooled everyone that she was one of them, that she belonged, she’d fooled fellow recruits, officers, everyone. She’d even fooled herself. This was nothing compared to that. There was nothing to be scared of here, no matter how many blasters were being waved around.

Tam took a half-step to her right as they walked and bumped her elbow up against Kaz. He was taller than she was, so she bumped him just below his shoulder. When he turned to look at her, she gave him a nod and a smile. She wasn’t worried, and she wanted him to see that. Kaz looked a bit confused, but he did smile back.

They walked through a few more clusters of trees, and then all of a sudden the trees thinned out and disappeared behind them, and they were standing out in the middle of a clearing next to a shelf of rocks that jutted up out of the ground. The clearing was littered with equipment and half-concealed starships, including fighters like A and Y wings and even an old Corellian Corvette, each of which were covered in camouflage netting to keep them from being seen from above. A lot of the equipement looked like it was there to keep the ships running, but there was more general stuff around as well, there were communications consoles and astronavigation charters, the sorts of things that were usually inside of ships instead of outside them.

There were people running around as well, dressed in simple tan and brown uniforms. A group of three of them came up as Tam and the others were escorted into the clearing, from left to right there was a thin woman with dirty blond hair up in a braid that ringed her head, a stouter, shorter woman with black hair back in a tight bun, and a man with swept-over blond hair and a thin goatee. Of the three, he was the only one carrying a blaster, a rifle he had in an easy hold across his body.

“Is this them?” The woman in the middle asked.

“Yes, ma’am.” The soldier who had stopped them said with a nod. “We found the five of them headed right through the perimeter. They had a tracking fob on them that was leading them to our position.”

The woman looked all of them over, brown eyes sweeping through them one by one, with her arms folded over her body in front of her. “Which one said he was Kazuda Xiono?”

“That’s me, I’m Kazuda Xiono.” Kaz said, giving the woman one of his trademarked sheepish but earnest smiles. “Hi, sorry we disturbed your perimeter, but we just had the fob and we weren’t sure where else to go so we just started walking toward where it told us to go.”

The woman studied him for a long moment. Tam was tempted to step in, but thought better of it. Of all of them who were there, Kaz was the only one who might be known by the Resistance at large, if this was the Resistance. The more he talked, the less like a First Order agent that he seemed, and if Poe Dameron had given them Kaz’s description they would be able to tell him apart immediately. If she tried to cut in, it would make it seem like she was trying to take the conversation away from him, like they had something to hide.

“Commander Dameron told us that there was a Kazuda Xiono that might pop up around here at some point,” The woman said at last, “But I have a hard time believing it’s you. Wouldn’t be the first time that the First Order tried to slip someone past us pretending to be a friend of his.”

“Is he here? I mean, is Commander Dameron around? He knows me, we flew together for a few missions, he’s the one who recruited me. If he’s here, he’ll be able to tell that I’m who I say I am right away.”

“Unfortunately, Commander Dameron is away on a mission.” The blond woman said, “Is he the only member of the Resistance who you’ve had contact with?”

“Well, um…” Kaz thought for a moment, and Tam silently, urgently, tried to get him to remember someone else he had met. She had never met anyone in the Resistance except for Kaz himself, and technically Yeager she supposed, and nothing she said would be helpful. But if he could just remember someone else that sounded somewhat reasonable for him to know…

“Oh!” Kaz’s memory and words came back to him at the same time. “General Organa. I met her once, Poe and I did a mission for her. She’d know who I am. Is she here?”

It took everything within Tam to not put her hands over her face and groan out loud. Saying General Organa knew him was about the second most improbable thing he could have said, next to saying Luke Skywalker, and a couple of tiers above him saying Poe Dameron. If they didn’t think that he was lying before, they definitely thought it now.

And that showed in everyone’s faces. None of the three Resistance officers looked like they believed him. The woman in the middle took a deep breath. “The General is…”

“The General is right here.”

The voice was old and a bit creaky, but Tam still recognized it. How could she not? It was the voice that the Resistance used in all of their transmissions, and the one that the First Order used in all of their propaganda. General Leia Organa strolled up behind the three Resistance officers, her hands behind her back, dressed in a simple yet regal navy and aqua dress, completely at odds with everyone else in the camp around her. Her face was weathered and lined, her hair gray and fraying, but her eyes still shone with intelligence and humor. She looked at Tam, and at Kaz, and then at the officers and soldiers who were with them.

“This is Kazuda all right. I’d recognize that haircut anywhere.”

Kaz had lowered his hands down from his head and was grinning like an idiot as he spoke. “Good to see you, General.”

“And you, Kaz. It’s been a bit, I’m glad to see you’re in one piece.” The General gestured, “You can all get back to your posts, they’re friends.”

The soldiers around them, including the one who had threatened Tam and Kaz with his blaster, all retreated without a protest or hesitation. Clearly, the General’s word was something they listened to. When they left, it was only Kaz and Tam standing together with the General and the other three officers.

General Organa paused, and her eyes became quite sad. “I’m sorry about what happened to the Hosnian system, Kaz. Have you heard from your family since then?”

Kaz nodded. He grew very somber, and Tam remembered back to that day, to Hosnian’s destruction, how intense and angry Kaz had been. That had also been the day she had left the _Colossus_ and joined the First Order, when her own sense of betrayal and mistrust of her closest friends had been at their height. A day she would rather have forgotten, but one she needed to always remember.

“My father contacted me after we left Castilon. I don’t think… I don’t know what happened to him after that, but it sounded like he wanted to get as far away from the First Order as he could.”

“And you couldn’t do that, could you?”

“No, ma’am. I want to fight back. I want to make sure they pay for what they did to my home, and to all the other homes they’ve destroyed.”

The General nodded, a soft smile on her face. “I figured as much. You and Poe are a lot alike, I think that’s why he recruited you. But I see that you’re not alone this time, and I think it’s time for this young lady to stop standing here with her hands on her head and introduce herself.”

Tam looked at one of the officers, the woman with the black hair, for confirmation. When the woman nodded, she took her hands off of her head and lowered them to her sides. “Thank you, General ma’am.”

“Listen, any friend of Poe’s is a friend of mine, but I’m going to need a bit more information about friends of Kaz. I hope you don’t take it too personally, but Rose wasn’t lying when she said that we’ve had First Order agents try to get into our camps before using tactics like this.” The General looked at Tam, her eyes not as intense or piercing as Tam expected, but they still kept her fixated, like she couldn’t look away even if she tried. “Maybe you can’t tell us your whole story, but at least tell us how you know Kaz.”

“Well, my name is Tamara Ryvora, but everyone calls me Tam. Kaz and I are… friends. We worked together aboard the _Colossus_.” Tam tried to figure out how much she could say, and whether she could manage to leave things out or lie about them. Something about the General’s gaze on her made her feel like lying was out of the question. “He’s probably the closest friend that I have.”

“Tam’s a really good mechanic and a great pilot, too.” Kaz chimed in, “She taught me pretty much everything I know about engineering while we worked together.”

“Is that all she is? A friend who’s a pilot and a mechanic?”

Tam knew that she knew. Somehow, the General knew that she was hiding something. And Tam needed to earn her trust, she wasn’t going to do it like this. So she took a deep breath and kept going. “There’s more. And this isn’t going to sound good, but I think all of our cards need to be on the table if you’re going to trust us, if you’re going to trust _me_. I… I worked for the First Order for a bit. It wasn’t long, a few weeks, maybe a couple of months at most, but it happened. I was a pilot for them, I flew missions against a few different places, including against the _Colossus_ … and my friends. It was a mistake. I joined them because I was hurt and angry and I believed the lies they told me. But Kaz never stopped believing in me. He’s the one who brought me back, he helped me escape when I realized that the First Order… when I realized that I’d made a terrible mistake joining them. He trusted me enough to let me come back. I don’t know if I deserve it, but that’s what happened. And now I’m here, because he still trusts me enough to bring me along on a mission to meet the leaders of the Resistance.”

“I do trust her.” Kaz said. As per usual, he felt like he needed to jump in to help, but for once Tam was fully grateful not only for the intention but for his words as well. “I trust Tam with my life. I know that she’s made some mistakes, but she’s a good person, she wants to do the right thing.”

The General had absorbed Tam’s whole story without a word, or even so much as a sound. And when she finished, and Kaz had added his piece as well, she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and smiled. “I believe you, Tam. I don’t think you’d lie about making a mistake like that, because I don’t think you’re really the sort of person who’d join the First Order if you knew what they were truly capable of. You wouldn’t be the first person they’d fooled into thinking they were the good guys, or the first person to leave them after realizing they were wrong.”

“Hey uh, not to interrupt or anything, but could we put our hands down, too?” Hype’s voice rang out over Tam’s shoulder, loud enough that Tam covered her face with her hand out of instinct. “I mean, I’m sure that I could just hold them up here all day if I wanted to, but I think the ladies are getting tired.”

“Shut _up_ , Hype!” Torra hissed at him, again loud enough to clearly be heard. “This is serious!”

“I was just asking!” Hype protested.

“And those are…?” The officer with the black hair, the one the General had called Rose, asked the open-ended question.

“Oh, they’re more of my friends.” Kaz said quickly, “I trust them all, too. They’ve been fighting against the First Order, flying, shooting down TIE Fighters, all of that stuff.”

“They’re two members of the _Colossus_ ’s pilots, and one of the former pirates we’ve recruited along the way.” Tam clarified, her hand still partially covering her face.

“And apparently one of them can’t keep his mouth shut when he’s not being talked to.” The other female officer said, though she did have a bit of a smirk when she said it.

“Yeah, that’s Hype, he’s always like that.” Kaz explained with a sheepish grin.

“Well, there’s no use throwing a party if you keep some people standing in the back.” The General gestured toward the others over Tam’s shoulder. “Come on you three, introduce yourselves properly, stop shouting all over the planet.”

The other three came forward, and Tam looked at them over her shoulder. Hype didn’t even look embarrassed as he strutted up to the group, though Torra and Synara looked both a bit of that and a bit exasperated as well. Tam locked eyes with Synara for a moment, and the former pirate rolled her eyes, which made Tam smile.

“I take it that you’re Hype, then.” The General said as the three of them got lined up with Tam and Kaz. “A former racer?”

“Not former, I am still very much a racer. Just hard to race when the First Order’s shut things down around you, y’know?” Hype didn’t seem awed by the General’s presence at all, he still had the cocky tilt to his head, the casual leaning of his shoulders like he was talking to an old buddy he’d met in Aunt Z’s cantina. “I’ll get back to racing just as soon as we’ve kicked the First Order so far out on their kiesters that they’ll never come back.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.” The General said with a smile. If she was offended by Hype’s informality, she didn’t show it at all. Then she turned to Torra. “Now, you, I think I have a clue who you are.”

Torra looked taken aback. “You do? I mean, you do, General, ma’am?”

“I think so. I like to think I know Venisia Doza well enough to recognize her daughter when I see her.”

Torra was instantly bouncing on the balls of her feet like an excited child. “Yes, that’s me, I mean, that’s my mom! I knew she flew for the Resistance but I didn’t know that you two knew each other!”

“I try to get to know the people fighting for me, especially the pilots, and _especially_ the good ones.” The General said, “Venisia has a long history fighting for good causes, and I’m glad to see her daughter’s following in her footsteps. I hope she’s well.”

“She is, she and my father are back home on the _Colossus_ waiting for us to let them know how this meeting goes. I think she wanted to come along, but my father told her that if I was going to be down here, they still needed some pilots to protect them just in case.”

“A sensible precaution, but one that I hope won’t be necessary.” The General smiled, then squinted her eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think Venisia mentioned your name to me when she mentioned you.”

“Torra, Torra Doza.”

“Torra. Well, Torra, if you’re half of the pilot that your mother is then you’re welcome in the Resistance, we need all of the good pilots we can get.” The General turned to look at the last in the line, and the one who seemed most uncomfortable with being where she was. Synara didn’t even try to meet her eyes. “From Tam’s description, you must be the former pirate who’s joined up with them.” The General said. Tam was astonished at how her voice could be both strong and gentle at the same time. “I hope you know that’s nothing to be ashamed of while you’re here. A lot of the people fighting with the Resistance have histories that are a lot more checkered than some light piracy.”

Synara was awkwardly clutching her left arm with her right hand, like she wasn’t sure what posture she should take, and she glanced up at the General from under her eyebrows. “Thank you, ma’am.” She said in a quiet voice. “I’ll do my best here, if you’ll have me.”

“Of course we will. I know you’re not here because of some higher cause, you’re here because these are your friends and you’d follow them no matter where they went. For some people I know, that’s as good a reason as any to fight against people like the First Order.” The General stepped back and turned, then turned back again so she was looking at all of them, up and down the line of five. “I appreciate your being here, and I appreciate that you’re all willing to risk everything to come here. But I’m afraid that if you’ve come here hoping to stay and use this as a permanent base, that just isn’t a possibility right now.”

“What?” Kaz asked out loud, “But, isn’t this the Resistance headquarters?”

“It is, but the headquarters isn’t a staging ground.” The black-haired Rose said. “Every time we gather our people into one place, the First Order finds us, and our people die.”

“The First Order is tenacious, and we’ve had to change our strategies, especially after Hosnian and Crait.” The General tucked her hands around behind her back again. “It’s an old trick from the Rebellion days, before most of you were probably born. We’re splitting our forces up, dispersing them as far as we can and still remain in contact with them. Everyone has their own little pocket of resistance to tend to, hitting back at the First Order however they can.”

“We can refuel you and resupply you, and if one or two of your people want to stay they can, but your whole group can’t stay for more than a cycle.” The other officer with blond hair said, “The _Colossus_ is a pretty big target and it’s something the First Order is still looking for, if they find you then they’ll find us.”

“I understand.” Kaz sounded crushed. Tam didn’t blame him. After so much time and effort searching for the Resistance, they were being turned away. “We would appreciate the supplies and fuel, and I’m sure some of our people would like having a chance to come down and stretch their legs. We have people aboard who’ve been with us since Castilon, and not all of them are pilots or soldiers. This might be a better place for them than aboard the _Colossus_ , but that’s really up to them.”

“Give Lieutenant Connix your ship’s hailing frequency, we’ll send them a signal so they know where to find us.” The General said, “And we’ll see how much we can help each other in a single cycle.”

“Come with me,” The blond officer said, turning to walk toward one of the larger communications consoles on the edge of the clearing.

Kaz turned to look at Tam and the others, and Tam gave him a nod and a look that tried to say that he should obviously go with her without actually saying it out loud. Kaz nodded in return. As Kaz hurried away, she turned back to the General. “We appreciate your hospitality, General. We didn’t intend to cause trouble by coming here, we were just… lost. After everything that’s happened out there, it kinda felt like we needed to find somewhere that we could take a minute to catch our breath.”

“I understand. I’m sure we all can. And don’t think that you’re causing us trouble by looking for help from us, if we didn’t try to help then we’d be failing our mission.” The General turned to the other officers. “Rose, make sure they get whatever they need. I need to check on some things, but I’ll be around if you need me.”

“Of course, General.” Rose nodded.

Leia turned one last time to look at them all, and said, “If I don’t see you again before you leave, then may the Force be with you.” And she turned back and walked away across the clearing in the direction of the deeper part of the forest.

Rose turned to all of them once the General was out of easy hearing range. “How did you all get here, is there a shuttle or something on the planet that you need to bring in?”

“We brought in a small shuttle, it’s about ten klicks away I think.” Tam affirmed, “Our utility droid is still aboard, if Kaz can contact her she’ll bring the shuttle right here.”

Rose nodded again. “Good.” She looked all of them over for another moment, dark eyes more intense than the General’s, not as wizened, but still perceptive and quick. “You all look like you could use some food and a drink.”

“See, _now_ you’re speaking my language.” Hype crowed, “Just tell me where I need to go and I’m there.”

“Our mess isn’t big or fancy, but it’ll keep you from starving to death.” Rose turned and pointed, “Right there, on the far side of that A-Wing.”

“On my way, don’t anyone try and slow me down.” Hype immediately started striding off in that direction. “Come on, ladies, let’s get at that food and get some drinks in before the rest of the crew arrives and spoils the mood.”

“In a minute Hype. I want to talk with Rose for a moment.” Tam turned to Synara and Torra. “You both can go, I won’t be long.”

“I’ll stay, if you don’t mind.” Synara said. She still looked awkward, not at all like the self-confident pirate that she tried to project herself as most of the time. “I’m not very hungry, regardless.”

“Well, I’M going.” Torra said, starting off after Hype. “I’m so hungry I could eat a whole bantha by myself.”

“Beaumont, go with them.” Rose urged the other officer, “Make sure they don’t get lost. And that the galley droid doesn’t kill them.”

The man nodded and hurried after the pair of pilots, leaving only Rose, Tam and Synara together in the empty part of the clearing. Rose watched the others leave, then turned back with her arms folded.

“What did you want to talk about, Tam?” Rose asked her, “Or was this more about getting away from the others?”

“No, I just… I wanted to make sure that you were okay with my being here. That _everyone_ was, I mean.” Tam huddled her arms around herself. She wasn’t cold, but she wasn’t sure what else to do with her hands. “I know that Hype and some other people still haven’t forgiven me for joining up with the First Order, and it’s different being a part of the _Colossus_ ’ crew again and coming here to join up with the official Resistance. You already said that you’ve had a problem with spies.”

Rose looked at her, and for a moment Tam thought that she was about to be angry, but then she smiled, and the dimple in her cheek said she was being genuine. “A few months ago, I might have had a problem with it, but the General was right, there’s more than one person here who used to work for the First Order before they joined on. One of my closest friends is a former Stormtrooper. So long as you’ve got someone to keep you on the right course, I don’t have a problem with it.”

“I appreciate that.” Tam said, returning the woman’s smile. “And I also know that there’s a difference between not having a problem with someone and really trusting them.”

“I suppose. Trust has to be earned. But if Kaz trusts you, and the General trusts him, I think it’s only a matter of time for you.” Rose shifted her gaze over to Synara. “What about you? Why did you stay behind?”

“I had… things to say that may not have been the best things to say in front of the others.” Synara still looked bashful, even though there were only three of them left together to talk. “I am not the most connected to this group, or committed, but there are things that I see that they cannot because of that. I must ask you, how much of a chance does the Resistance have against the First Order? I came here expecting there to be a hidden base full of skillful fighters and pilots, but…”

“It’s less than you hoped and worse than you imagined.” Rose finished for her and set her mouth into a grim line.

“I am not a patriot and I am not a fighter. I was a pirate, and I joined with the crew of the _Colossus_ because it was the right thing to do, but I did not sign up to fight a war that cannot be won.The First Order has been hounding us relentlessly, they have sent their own soldiers, bounty hunters, they turned my former crewmates against us. The _Colossus_ has been through hell, and everyone on board has as well, and I don’t know how much longer we can keep going. So I want to ask if YOU think that we can win, because right now I feel like we’re losing.”

Tam wanted to reach over and put her hand on Synara’s shoulder, or maybe even hug her; she had all of her guards down, she was being honest and forthright and realistic in a way that showed how scared she was. But it wasn’t her place. They’d barely spoken to each other after Tam had come back, Synara seemed to almost be avoiding her. Maybe, Tam reflected, that was because she had been responsible for some of the hell that the _Colossus_ had gone through. A fresh wave of guilt washed through her as she realized how much everyone had gone through while she had turned her coat, and how responsible she was for it all because of it.

“Well,” Rose said, “If you’re asking me to somehow inspire you, I’m not good at that. I’m just a mechanic, the only reason I’m an officer is because there’s so few of us left that the General really trusts. I do know that we can’t beat the First Order just by fighting. There’s too many of them and not enough of us. So our only hope is to turn their hate against them.”

“Turn their hate against them?” Tam repeated, “What does that mean?”

“I mean that the First Order isn’t about order at all, they’re about hate. Hate for the Republic, hate for the Resistance, hate for anyone who fights against them. They don’t want to build anything or save anything, they just want to destroy everything that stands in their way so they can lord over everyone who’s weaker than them. But hate isn’t enough, hate will burn out eventually, like a fire without fuel. We can beat them by outlasting them, by waiting until their hate runs out and focusing on saving what we can in the meantime.”

“And what happens if their hate doesn’t run out?” Tam asked.

“Yours did, didn’t it?” Rose asked her in turn. “You realized that the First Order were wrong, and you escaped. I think there are other people with them who’ll realize the same thing, people they’ve misled, or people they’ve kidnapped and brainwashed who never had a choice.”

“I wish I had your confidence, or courage.” Synara lamented, “I cannot imagine how long it will take for the First Order to begin to fall apart, I do not know if I have the strength to last that long.”

“Of course you do, Synara.” Tam spoke with confidence, “You helped hold everyone together after the _Colossus_ left Castilon, and even before that, before you were really a part of the crew. You were helping us when you were supposed to be spying on us. And even all the time that I… wasn’t there, you WERE there to keep Kaz and Neeku and the others safe.”

“But that’s different. Tam, you and Kaz and Neeku and the others, you’re my friends.”

“Friends can be all it takes.” Rose told her, “Sometimes friends are all you have, and sometimes they’re everything you need. Whenever you think about how hard it will be to fight back against the First Order, just think of your friends and how hard they're fighting, or how hard they fought. It’ll give you the strength to keep going, trust me. We can’t win this war fighting the way the First Order does, we can’t hate because we’ll burn out the same way. We have to focus on what we love. That’s what makes us better.”

“Our friends are what brought me back, Synara.” Tam knew that Rose was right, and she was pretty sure that Synara knew it as well, but it wouldn’t hurt either of them to be reminded. “If the First Order came down on us right now, I would go up there and fight every single one of them to keep my friends safe, including you.”

Synara looked down at the ground, but she also nodded. “I understand. I think… I think I feel the same. I just… sometimes I remember seeing the sky full of First Order fighters and seeing all of their soldiers coming aboard the _Colossus_ , and think of how small the force that they sent against us was compared to how many of them are elsewhere, and it all seems so… hopeless.”

“Oh, I can relate, believe me.” Rose said with a smile. “Maybe while we’re here, I’ll get to tell you about the time that I was aboard the First Order flagship before we blew it up.”

“Wait, you were aboard the _Supremacy_?” Tam asked in astonishment, “How? When?”

“An infiltration mission that went bad and almost got us killed. I did bite General Hux, though, that was fun.” Rose glanced up for a moment, in silence, then turned. “Sounds like some of our teams are coming back, we might want to get clear so they have space to land.”

“How do you-?” Tam started to ask, when she heard it, too, the distant, high-pitched whine of an engine that badly needed tuning and possibly a replacement shock hypercoil. Of course, if Rose was a mechanic as well, then her ears would be tuned to engines that needed maintenance the same way that Tam’s were. “Is that a tee-seventy five series X-wing?”

“I hope so, there should be an old Corellian why-tee thirteen-hundred freighter with them, too.” Rose started to move out of the clearing and toward some of the stacks of scattered equipment. “If they’re both coming in together, that means the mission went well.”

“What are you two talking about?” Synara asked, following both Tam and Rose across the clearing, “I don’t hear anything.”

“When you’ve spent as long fixing up old engines as I have, your ears sort of train themselves to listen for them.” Rose said, “Kaz mentioned that you’re a mechanic too, Tam?”

“Sure am. You think you’ll need a hand?”

“Right now, we need all the hands we can get. Synara, are you a mechanic at all?”

“Not so much, no. I was working as a salvager aboard the _Colossus_ before we left Castilon, fixing engines has never been my forte.”

“It’s up to you, then.” Rose started going through some of the boxes and crates and picking out tools. “We’re short on ground crew who’re rated for heavy equipment, so I’m sure we could use you, but if you’d rather go find your other friends…”

“I want to help out however I can.” Synara said in gentle interruption, “Even if that is just moving crates around or dragging fuel cables.”

“You can help me, Synara.” Tam said, “Neeku isn't here and I’m sure Kaz is going to be busy, so I’d like having you help out if you can.”

Synara didn’t answer, but when Tam checked over her shoulder she could see that the Miralian was smiling.

“I’ll need the two of you to help run the usual post-flight checks on the X-Wing that’s coming in.” Rose said, coming over to hand Tam a hydrospanner and a datapad with a hardline connection adaptor. She’d put on gloves and had a pair of welding goggles in her other hand. “The freigher’s the real job, but the X-Wing should be spec, it’s all on the pad.”

“Is the freighter modified, then?” Tam asked, “Not standard anymore?”

Rose laughed, a lovely sort of clear laugh that lit up the air around them, even as the sounds of the engines got even louder and started to drown their voices out. “If there’s anything still standard about the _Millenium Falcon_ ,” She said, “I think we’d all be surprised.”

“Wait, the _Millenium-_?” Tam started to ask a question, but her voice was completely drowned out by the roaring of the engines of two ships that cruised in low over the treetops, blasting the greenery around them with wind and repulsor echoes. It was indeed an old Corellian freighter and more recently-produced X-Wing, the latter painted white and blue, the former a motley amalgamation of rust, grey paint and black carbon scoring. Tam recognized the freighter immediately, she’d seen it in First Order briefings about ships of interest, and she knew who was likely aboard it. As much as meeting Leia Organa in the flesh was a mesmerizing experience, the infamy of Rey was even more so. There was no single person in the Resistance more wanted than her, and the fact that she was here filled part of Tam, a part still somehow aligned in thought with the First Order, with a sense of excitement and dread in equal ratio.

The freighter set down first, almost like it was falling from the sky, and settled on its landing struts with groans and hissing that made Tam wince. It was like the whole ship was ready to collapse the moment it set down, she could hear every retrojet and compensator sigh and groan, in desperate need of tuning or replacement. The X-Wing was in much better shape, and came over and down a bit closer to where Tam, Synara and Rose were standing, cruising down and settling in without much complaint, and Tam could see the pilot giving them a jaunty wave as they brought it in for a landing, a wave that Rose returned. And Tam was a bit shocked to see a familiar orange and white BB unit astromech sitting in its droid socket. A piece of the puzzle that she had almost completely forgotten she’d been putting together fell into place.

As the fightercraft settled down and the engines started to spin down, the cockpit popped open and a russet-skinned man dressed in an orange flightsuit doffed his helmet and shook out curly dark-brown hair. He set the helmet down on the ship’s nose and then jumped over the side of the fighter to land on the ground before anyone could move a ladder over to help him down. “Rose,” He called over, “I hope you’ve got a fire crew ready for the _Falcon,_ she took some hits on our way down.”

“They’re on their way, we had some people on patrol that are coming back.” Rose answered as she hustled out to meet him. “How did it go?”

“Well, you know, some good, some bad, the usual stuff.” The pilot put his hands on his hips and gave her a cocky smile. “Got a bit singed, but nothing BB-8 couldn’t handle.” He turned to look back at the ship over his shoulder. “Right buddy?”

The astromech droid beeped indignant things at him in binary, popping itself out of its socket and then rolling off of the ship and to the ground with a thud.

“BB-8.” Tam said under her breath. She turned to look at Synara, and saw the recognition in her eyes as well at the same moment. Tam hurried over to join Rose where she was standing with the pilot. “You must be Poe Dameron,” She said, “Glad to finally meet you.”

The pilot looked at her with confusion for a moment. “I… don’t think I know you, do I know you? I don’t know her, do I Rose?”

“She’s just got here,” Rose said with a smile, “She came in with Kazuda Xiono.”

“Kazuda- Kaz is here?” Poe asked excitedly, “When, I mean, how long has he been here, when did he get in?”

“We got here a few minutes ago, I’m Tam, and this is Synara.” Tam poked her thumb over at her friend. “We worked with Kaz on the _Colossus_ , and I’ve met your droid before.”

BB-8 rolled up to them, looking first at Poe and then at Tam and Synara, head and photoreceptors doing a fairly good approximation of a double-take, before making excited beeps and rolling closer for a greeting.

“Glad to see you again, too, BB-8.” Tam told it, “It’s been a while, and I’m glad that I actually know who you are now instead of just thinking that you’re Kaz’s droid.”

“I remember now, you’re one of the mechanics who worked for Jarek Yeager.” Poe said, recognition on his face and pointing a finger toward Tam. “Kaz mentioned you a couple of times in his reports, he said you’re great at just about everything.”

“Well, compared to him, maybe.” Tam said with a shrug. Still, the fact that Kaz would go out of his way to praise her in his reports back to the Resistance thrilled her inside. “Synara and I will be running the checks on your ship, if you want to talk to Kaz, he’s probably over by the communications station talking with the _Colossus_.”

“Yeah, I’ll go say hi before I debrief with the General.” Poe said. He looked at her for a moment, and for that moment Tam was terrified that he somehow knew that she had been with the First Order, and wasn’t sure where her loyalties lied, despite what Kaz had told him. Then he said, “Glad to have you, Tam. And you, Synara. We need everyone we can get right now, and if Kaz thinks so highly of you, I trust him.” He winked at them and walked away. BB-8 trilled a farewell and followed him across the clearing in the direction of the communications area where Kaz and Connix had gone.

“So, did Kaz have Poe’s droid with him for part of the time he was on the _Colossus_?” Synara asked, still trying to put the pieces together herself. “Because I have definitely met that droid before.”

“He did, I think Poe had BB-8 with him for a while to keep an eye on him, and then they must have swapped so CB joined us instead.” Tam wasn’t sure of the whole story, but she knew the general outline of it from what Kaz had told her. He’d been so eager for her to trust him once he didn’t have to keep secrets from her that he had babbled all sorts of things about his mission, most of which didn’t really matter. Still, she appreciated knowing, since it made things like this make a bit more sense. “Regardless, it seems like his ship’s in pretty good shape, so this check shouldn’t take long.”

“Yeah, you got lucky, Poe’s not always that careful.” Rose said with a smile, “I’m going to go check on the _Falcon,_ let me know if you need anything.”

“Alright, will do.” As Rose departed, Tam adjusted her gloves and gave Poe’s X-Wing a once-over. It was indeed in fairly good shape, with a bit of carbon scoring around the right upper s-foil and some other dents and scrapes, but she wasn’t about to let appearances deceive her. She didn’t know this ship, so she would use the datapad Rose had given her to run a diagnostic against the last time the ship’s baseline had been established and see if anything was out of alignment that a visual inspection wouldn’t tell her. They would also need to refuel the ship and possibly reload it with additional ordinance, if the pad was correct, but that would come later.

“Okay, let’s get started.” She said with a sigh. She hadn’t always been a mechanic, it wasn’t really what she wanted, but there was something soothing about going back to it after all this time. It was simple, straightforward, there weren’t complicated political factions involved or swirls of guilt going around in her head. Something needed to be fixed, and she was going to fix it.

“What do you need me to do?” Synara asked.

Tam turned to look at her. “Well, first thing, I need to run a diagnostic on the ship, so for now you can stand there and look pretty until we figure out what else we need to do.”

Synara, rather than looked abashed, gave her a confident smirk and folded her arms over her chest. “Now, that I can do.”

Tam readied to go to work, until she took a step toward the X-Wing and realized that she couldn’t get up to the cockpit to plug the datapad in because the dashing Poe Dameron had disembarked without a ladder. She turned back to Synara. “Actually, if you could look around for a ladder, that’s probably more important right now. Kinda hard to work on a ship without a ladder to get into it.”

Synara sighed and shook her head with a tired smile. “I was wondering if you were going to catch that, or if you were too busy getting lost in Poe Dameron’s eyes.”

“I was not lost in his eyes.” Tam insisted, “I was more concerned with remembering where I’d seen his droid before.”

“Sure, of course.” Synara turned to go where the other mechanic supplies were littered around them. “I know he’s not my type, but I wouldn’t blame you.”

“Just go find us a ladder, alright?” Tam called after her with an exasperated huff.

As Synara searched, Tam did not have much else to do except wait and give the X-Wing a more thorough visual inspection. She had not had a chance to work on an X-Wing of any model in the past, very few of them passed through the _Colossus_ while it had been on Castilon, but she knew the basics of how Incom liked to build their ships, and she knew how to work on fightercraft more than just about any other sort of ship. She’s spent so long working on the Fireball, trying to patch it together from whatever scraps she and Yeager could get ahold of, that seeing a fighter that was not only constructed within the last decade but actually in good working order before she’d even touched it was a terrific change of pace.

Every part of the X-Wing made her more excited to start working on it. It wasn’t exactly top of the line, it wasn’t a T-80 or anything, but it was still very well maintained, even though it was being flown by one of the most notorious pilots in the galaxy. Someone obviously cared about making sure that this fighter was in as few pieces as possible and each piece was in top shape. Perhaps Rose? She seemed like the sort of mechanic who was extremely mindful of her work, especially if she was friends with the person flying it, like she apparently was with Poe Dameron. How many other mechanics were even here at the base if Rose, an officer, was the one managing the mechanical well-to-do of fightercraft on a day to day basis?

Tam was pondering these things while she inspected the X-Wing, datapad in hand, when she heard someone clear their throat behind her. She turned around to see a man there with black skin and short hair that looked like it was just starting to grow out, dressed in a brown jacket over simple spacer slacks. He gave her a genuine, if a bit awkward, smile as she turned around.

“Hey, uh, you’re Tam, right?”

“That’s my name, yes. And you are…?”

“Oh, uh, I’m Finn.” The man poked his finger back toward where the beat-up Corellian freighter had set down and was now being inspected by Rose and a couple of other mechanics. “Just came back in on the _Falcon_ and I heard that there were some new faces around here, so I thought I’d come over and introduce myself.”

“Well I’m pleased to meet you, Finn.” Tam glanced back over Finn’s shoulder toward where the _Millenium Falcon_ was resting. “Wait, you flew in on the _Millenium Falcon_?”

Finn nodded, putting his hands on his hips. He seemed to not really know what to do with his hands, like he was used to holding something in them. There was also something about his posture, so ramrod straight, that Tam found oddly familiar, even though she’d never met the man before. “Yep, I uh, I did. Well, I didn’t fly it, I’m not really a pilot, but I am a pretty good gunner so Rey likes having me along.”

“You know Rey?” Tam reappraised him for a moment. This awkward man flew with Rey aboard the _Millennium Falcon_? Just exactly who was he? “Just who are you, Finn? Sorry for being rude, but I thought I knew of all the important people in the Resistance and apparently I’m wrong.”

“Well I mean, I’m not important, I’m just a guy. Well, not _just_ a guy, but…” He trailed off, seemed at a loss for words, then shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

Something clicked into Tam’s mind. It was his pattern of speaking, combined with his posture, the way he held his hands… “You were a Stormtrooper, weren’t you? You used to work for the First Order.”

Finn looked taken aback. “How did, I mean yeah, that’s true, but how did you know if you don’t know me, and we’ve never met?”

“Because I used to work for them, too, I got to see how they work up close, how they act without armor on.”

For a moment, Finn’s eyes lit up, and his voice got more intense and focused. “You used to work for them, too? Were you a Stormtrooper?”

“No, I was a pilot. I… joined them, I thought they were doing the right things, and I thought that… I thought they valued the people who worked for them, and obviously I was wrong. So I defected.”

Finn nodded. He seemed almost disappointed, even though he apparently agreed with what she was saying. “Yeah, I get it. We have a few other people like you, people who joined up because they thought they were on the right side, but changed their minds.”

“But not you.” Tam thought she was catching on. She’d heard stories about some of the Stormtroopers and where they’d come from. Back then, she assumed they were propaganda put out by the Resistance, but… “You were one of their lifetime soldiers, the ones they trained from birth.”

Finn nodded again. “I’ve never met anyone else like me who’s defected. No other Stormtroopers, I mean. I guess everyone else was either too brainwashed or indoctrinated to ever really realize that… they’re on the wrong side.”

“But you can’t give up hope, can you? You have to hope that you’re not the only one.”

“That’s right.”

No wonder he was party to the upper echelons of the Resistance. For a Stormtrooper to break their brainwashing, to defect from the First Order after being trained from birth to be unhesitatingly loyal to their commanders and follow their orders, that was an incredible feat of moral courage. Tam once again reassessed the man in front of her. Of course Finn would be awkward and a bit hesitant, he’d been raised from birth to be a mindless, faceless soldier, they were not trained for things like talking to people they’d just met. She wondered, for a crystalline and very painful moment, if Finn was even his real name.

“I certainly hope that you aren’t, Finn.” Tam said, remembering Rose’s words of hope from earlier. “I hope that most of their soldiers see that waging a war for no other reason but hatred isn’t a war worth fighting.”

“Yeah, so do I. Thanks.” Finn said with a smile.

“Finn!” Another voice called out to him, causing him to turn and look over his shoulder, and drawing Tam’s gaze as well. A woman was there, she had pale skin and brown hair done up in three buns behind her head, she wore tan and gray robes that looked oddly out of place amidst the forest greenery, and she was carrying a staff on a strap on her shoulder. “Leia wants to see us!”

“I’m coming!” Finn called back, and he turned back to Tam. “Good talking with you Tam, I’ll see you around.”

“I hope so.” Tam managed to say before he turned and jogged away to join the woman. Tam couldn’t see her face quite clearly enough to see if she recognized her from anywhere, but as the two of them hurried away together, the factors and circumstances all clicked together in her head. That couldn’t be Rey, could it? She looked so… plain. Not at all like the bogeyman that the First Order made her out to be. But then again, since when had the First Order ever said anything truthful about the people they wanted to destroy?

Tam watched them both go, still trying to decide if it was Rey or someone entirely different, then turned around when she heard a noise. She found Synara was there, with a boarding ladder on wheels propped up against the X-Wing next to her, her arms crossed over her chest and a smirk on her face.

“What?” Tam asked, “I was just talking to him.”

“Of course you were. Like you were _just talking_ to Poe Dameron, too.”

Tam rolled her eyes. “Synara, we don’t have time for this. You found the ladder, good, now we can actually start to work.”

Tam climbed the ladder and got onto the X-Wing’s nose, reaching back behind the control panel for the small cable that she would plug into the datapad to run the appropriate diagnostics. The pad chirped approvingly as she made the connection and watched it start to run through its checks; it didn’t look like it was going to take very long, both the pad and the fighter were new enough that they knew how to talk to each other fairly fluently.

As she waited, Tam glanced back down at Synara, who was still standing at the bottom of the ladder with her arms crossed. “Look, if you’re going to make fun every time I talk to people here, it’s going to get really old.”

“Not everyone, it’s just funny how the cutest men around seem to want to come over and talk to you pretty much without fail.”

“Poe Dameron was talking to Rose, and I interrupted, he didn’t come looking to talk to me. And Finn, he was just introducing himself, he just got back from a mission.” The pad chirped again and Tam glanced down at it, tapping the screen to approve it running the more thorough check of the compressor and compensator systems. “Honestly, Synara, it’s not like they’re all just dropping out of the sky in front of me. Besides, I’m not interested, getting into a relationship right now, with the war going on, would be a disaster, especially with one of the bigwigs in the Resistance. You may as well weld a targeting drone to your back.”

“Hmm.” Synara started to pace a bit, walking around the nose of the X-Wing to the other side. “But what if they weren’t?”

“Excuse me?”

“What if they weren’t Resistance bigwigs, and if there wasn’t a war going on? What if they were just pilots and soldiers? Would you be interested then?”

“Synara, what’s with you? Where is this coming from? We’re here to do a job, Kaz and the others are in charge of the hobnobbing, I’m here to fix up this X-Wing and you agreed to help me. I didn’t come here looking for eye or arm candy.”

Synara looked up at her for a moment, then turned and looked back down to the ground and started walking back around the nose of the ship again. “I was just thinking about something Rose said, that’s all.”

“About what thing Rose said?” Tam asked her the question, but then the datapad chirped again and pulled her attention away. She turned back to it to start reading through what it was telling her about the X-Wing, but she still kept an ear open for what Synara said, if she said anything at all.

“When she was talking about what was important, she said that we cannot win by hating, we have to focus on what we love. I thought, after that, I wasn’t sure what I love. I appreciate everyone on the _Colossus_ for taking me in, people like Kaz and Neeku and the others have been so kind to me, even with everything that happened with Krogan and the other pirates. But that isn’t love, I thought. And then, you said something that made me think even more. You said you would fight the first order for any of your friends, including me.”

“Well, yeah, I would.” Tam glanced up at her again. “What are friends for except to have each other’s backs?”

“But that’s more than just being a friend, Tam. You were a part of the First Order, you were one of their pilots. And you’d go right back out there to fight them?”

Tam thought about it, and she nodded. “Of course. If one of my friends was in danger, I’d take them all on myself. Especially people like Kaz or Neeku or you, the ones who trust me enough to welcome me back. I feel like I owe it to you all to try and make up for the mistakes I made, going back out against the First Order is just a part of that. It’s going to happen sooner or later, and I’m ready for it.”

It was Synara’s turn to think as she looked back down at the ground, her braided hair whipping up and over her shoulder. “But, that’s not love, is it?”

“I don’t know what else you’d call it. I love my friends. Sure it may not be _romantic_ love, but it’s still love, because it’s sure strong enough to get me up and fighting when I think about them being in danger, just like Rose said.” Tam unplugged the datapad and slid down the ladder to Synara’s side. “Ship looks pretty good, just needs some light tuning on the number four engine, then a refuel and rearm, we should be able to manage all that pretty quick.”

Synara nodded, their conversation seemingly forgotten. “What do you need me to do?”

“Well, I’m going to get started on the engine, so I’ll need you to either start hauling the fuel line over here from wherever they’ve left it, or scrounge me up some of the tools that I need.” Tam set the datapad up on the fighter’s nose and pulled the spanner that Rose had given her out of her pocket. “One spanner isn’t going to cut it.”

“I’ll hunt around for that fuel line,” Synara said, turning away and walking back toward where the nearest pile of equipment was put down, “I really don’t know what you’d need, and fueling it up will take more time anyway.”

“True.” Tam followed her only as far as reaching the tool rack that Rose had raided previously. There were a lot of tools, from additional spanners to laser welders, hammers and wrenches that could adapt to pretty much any shape or size. Tam wasn’t sure exactly what she would need, so she picked out a few that looked useful, whatever was easy to carry and wouldn’t need to be lugged around, and returned to the X-Wing. The number four engine was on the lower-right s-foil, meaning she could reach it without having to climb up onto the ship again, and hauling the tools around wouldn’t be a big deal. She’d never fixed the engines on an X-Wing before, but an engine was an engine, there were only so many ways one could be broken or fixed, and all this one needed was a bit of tuning. She’d figure it out.

Tam had opened the engine casing and was starting to give the exhaust flaps a check before she heard Synara starting to come back. She was dragging a heavy length of fuel hose, it looked more awkward than heavy but she didn’t seem to be having much of a struggle nor did she ask for help. She brought it over to the X-Wing and dropped it to the ground, then wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and turned to look at Tam.

“Where do I put this?” She asked out loud.

“The fuel connector should be underneath, probably…” Tam took her head out of the engine for a moment to glance at the bottom of the X-Wing’s hull. “Right here, next to the engine. You just have to open that valve and hook the hose up, then do up the seal.”

Synara nodded and picked the hose up again, dragging it over to where Tam had indicated, then dropping it back on the ground so she could crouch down and lean into where the fuel value was, which put her right beside Tam for a bit. Tam stuck her head back under the engine cowling. The exhaust flaps looked good, so she moved further in toward where the thrust monitor was, and closer to the power coupling. There were a lot of things to check, but since the engine was built in a line she knew what to check first and what to move through, just start at the thruster and move her way toward the reactor piping. It wasn’t too different from the engines on the Fireball, and she knew those like they were the back of her hands.

“Could it be romantic, though?”

Synara’s question made Tam’s hands freeze for a moment. She slowly brought her head out of the engine and looked at her. “Could… what be?”

“You said that you loved your friends, but not romantically.” Synara wasn’t looking at her, she was busily unsealing the fuel cap. “Could it be romantic, could it become that?”

Tam was stunned for a moment, her hands still inside of the engine, head halfway out of it, staring at the side of her friend’s head and trying to see her expression. Was she trying to be funny? Was she being serious? Was she fishing for something specific, about a specific person? Was this why she was teasing her about men coming to talk with her?

“Are you… are you talking about Kaz?”

Synara shrugged. “I could be.”

“Well no, Kaz and I, we’re friends. He’s like a-an idiot older brother, he’s really good at _one thing_ and bad at just about everything else, but it’s okay because he’s dad’s favorite. I mean, that’s what it’s like for him and I’m sure you’re not talking about Neeku or Yeager or-”

“What about me?” Synara finally turned to look at her. Tam couldn’t figure out her expression, was it questioning? Was it stressed? Was she just… was she hoping?

“Well I mean… I mean I’ve never thought about… I-I don’t…” Tam tried to answer, but realized that she didn’t have one to give. She’d genuinely never thought about it. She liked Synara, she was smart, she didn’t suffer fools, and even if she didn’t know how to do something she still pitched in. But… romantic? Was that something that she could be? Was that how she could think of her, or of anyone?

“If not, that’s fine.” Synara gave her a sad smile. “Wouldn’t be the first time in my life someone told me NO.”

“No, I… I just haven’t… I mean…” Tam took a moment, pulled her hands out of the engine and tried to gather herself. “Synara, between when you and I met, you were a spy for the pirates, and then I joined the First Order, and ever since I escaped them we’ve been on the run and constantly in danger, and I haven’t had time to think about things like this. I don’t really have an answer right now.”

Synara nodded with her eyes closed. “I understand. Do you-”

“But!” Tam held her hand up with her index finger raised. “Here’s what I’ll promise you. I promise that I’ll think about it, and I will get an answer for you, okay? I won’t just leave you hanging. At the very least, we’re friends, and I won’t leave my friend without an answer when she asks me a question like that. Deal?”

That made Synara smile. “Deal.”

“Good. Now, let’s get this fighter taken care of.”


End file.
